Chapter 1: A Knock at the Office Door

The city of New York did not care much for the sun. By the time it managed to crest the jagged teeth of the Manhattan skyline, it was already filtered through a thick, gray veil of coal smoke and industrial ambition. Inside the office on 42nd Street, the air tasted of stale tobacco and the kind of disappointment that only comes from a long night of watching shadows stretch across a desk.

David Andrew Peter Slade, known to every soul with a grudge or a desperate need as Dap, leaned back in his creaky mahogany chair. He hated the name his parents had saddled him with, but he hated the nickname even more; it sounded like the soft, final thud of a body hitting a sidewalk. He watched a single fly buzz against the frosted glass of the office door. The glass bore his name in peeling black paint, a testament to a career built on finding things that people were usually better off keeping lost.

Dana Winslow sat at her desk just outside the inner sanctum. She was the only thing in the room that functioned with any semblance of precision. Her fingers hovered over the typewriter keys like a pianist waiting for a cue, though her typing was a clatter of staccato errors that would have made a stenographer weep. She was sharp, she was intimidating, and she held the office together with the sheer force of her annoyance.

The door rattled. It was not the confident knock of a client with a fat wallet, nor the heavy pounding of a creditor. It was the hesitant, rhythmic tap of someone who had never visited a private investigator’s office and hoped, deep down, that they would never have to again.

Dana didn’t look up from her ledger. “If you’re selling insurance, the boss already has a policy that covers him for everything except bad luck,” she called out, her voice clipped and professional.

The door drifted open. A girl stepped inside, looking as out of place as a prayer in a precinct locker room. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her coat was thin, the kind of cheap wool that offered no protection against the biting winds whipping off the East River. Her eyes were wide, darting around the room with a frantic, bird-like energy. She was a relic in a city of predators, a girl who still looked like she believed in the goodness of strangers.

“I,” she began, her voice cracking before she could finish the sentence. She clutched her handbag against her chest as if it were a shield. “I need to speak with Mr. Slade. Please. It’s about my mother.”

Dana sighed, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She looked at the girl with a mixture of pity and practiced detachment. “The name is Dap. And he’s busy doing nothing, which is his primary occupation on a Tuesday morning. What happened to your mother, kid?”